Oh, oh! The truth almost escaped her mouth! (Image generously borrowed from Fullerton Stories)
It is July 22, 2011 and now-MIA Chief Sellers gets an e-mail from City Hall’s version of Andrew Goodrich, city publicist, Syliva Palmer.
She’s subsequently fled the the scene of the crime, and won’t have to answer embarrassing questions about this correspondence – like her insinuation that Councilman Bruce Whitaker leaked inside information to FFFF in a post. Apparently the otiose Palmer was too lazy to actually read the post, and too stupid to follow the link to The Fullertonian – the ones who actually caught Goodrich in the broken bones lie.
But so what if Whitaker had actually had a hand in disseminating the truth? The outright lie about Fullerton cops suffering broken bones was propagated by Goodrich, clearly with the blessing of Sellers and Plamer, and now we may safely assume, Palmer’s boss City Manager, Joe Felz. Perhaps with the blessing of the Three Dead Tree Stumps, too. That would certainly fit the truth-challenged profile of Pat McKinley.
Note also that Palmer laments the fact that the media didn’t talk to other reliable councilmen who, presumably were only too happy to toe the party line.
Everybody who goes to church is familiar with the concept of tithing – literally giving one tenth of your income to support the church and its good works. Of course the act is voluntary.
The people who pay for water from the Fullerton Water Works have been paying a tithe, too. You see, since 1970 the Citycrats have decreed that ten percent of the cost of a monopoly supplying you with water will be added to your bill, and then be immediately re-directed to the City’s General Fund.
In the early days, when water was dirt cheap it was a way to help pay for certain indirect costs of employees who were considered overhead support for the water works. It was called an “in-lieu franchise fee” like the ones the City charges other utilities to operate in Fullerton. Still, there was an immediate problem that nobody addressed: it was bad management, and bad accounting, and opened the door for all sorts of abuse. Decades later, in 1997, Proposition 218 was passed that specifically addressed the scam of governments charging “fees” that were nothing more than hidden taxes – just like Fullerton’s 10% in-lieu fee. It was now required that fee amounts be established through objective supportable analysis that was conducted transparently, in the light of public scrutiny. No longer could governments legally charge for more than any service was worth.
But Fullerton did. For 15 years the City continued to charge, then rake off a ten percent tribute from the Water Fund that went to pay for things like pensions and pay raises for all Fullerton city employees, stuff that had nothing to do with providing water to you. Not only did the city councils know about the scam, they heartily approved the slight-of-hand, year after year.
Meantime, the cost of water skyrocketed, increasing nearly 350% between 1997 and now, jacking up the illegal tax from $700,000 a year in 1997 to over $2.5 million a year now. That’s a rate of about 23%a year, just in case you’re inclined to keep track. A staggering total of almost $27 million has been surreptitiously extorted from you since Proposition 218 went into effect.
Those who support this cheapjack end run think it’s right and proper for you to pay this tithe without your knowing it, and without your consent. After all they’ve had plenty of opportunity to insist, at least, that notification of the 10% diversion be made on each water bill. But they never have. And that’s because their first priority is continue funding six-figure pensions, automatic raises for employees, and all the other things that constitute business as usual in their Church of The Almighty Bureaucrat. It’s their church, and as far as the High Priests and pharisees are concerned, you taxpayers can just sit in the back pew, way, way back there in the dark, and keep your mouths shut.
And I was right. But enough about me. Last night the Three Gasping Gastropods chose Sharon Quirk-Silva to be Fullerton’s mayor in 2012.
In meeting that can only be characterized as bizarre, the repuglicans did the heretofore unthinkable: make a Democrat mayor in her re-election year. The visceral pain that must have caused anti-recall handler “Dick” Ackerman” is a wonderful bonus gift of the Recall. See, Tricky Dick is courting what’s left of the old liberal rear guard and the Recall gave him no choice but to promote Q-S. Ha! Suck on that, Dicky Boy.
Smiling on the outside...
First came public comments, Part 1, with the usuall brow-beating of the Three Triceratops, plus a special guest stars, Pam Keller. The goofy grin and air-headed air of self-importance reminded me of just how grateful we should all be that she bid the council adios.
Ah said, that there was sum bad chicken...
Then some business items which o’ Doc Heehaw blew through so fast you would have thought he was either double parked or was anticipating an urgent case of diarrhea. Then the elections of mayor, and mayor pro tem. I wonder what Ed Royce thinks about this since any elevation in stature for Q-S means the greater likelihood for an eventual Congressional challenger for him.
As anticipated the Trio of Broken Bivalves elected the youngest, and sprightliest of their gang, Pat McPension, to be back-up mayor. The fact that McKinley believes it’s not dangerous for cops to fondle women in the backseats of their patrol car seems not to have been a deterrent to his promotion. Bruce Whitaker was nominated by Q-S, to her credit. The vote was 3-2.
Lookin' out for the ladies, oh yeah!
And then the sublime. Public comments were re-opened. The reading of Marisa Gerber’s article on the sad state of affairs in the Fullerton Police Deapartment followed; a litany of law-breaking and head breaking that sums up what the department became under Jones, Bankhead and McKinley’s over-long tenures. It’s now on the public record and McKinley can no longer hide from the truth: under his command, or lack of same, the police department sank into an undeniable Culture of Corruption.
Yessiree, Friends, tonight is the night when our “esteemed” City Council chooses our mayor for 2012.
It’s also the night when the Council will be entertained (not enlightened we may reasonably assume) by a reading from Marisa Gerber’s great exposition of Fullerton’s bad cops, bad cops in the OC Weekly. After hearing the extensive (and not even exhaustive) report on the Culture of Corruption created and abetted by Jones, Bankhead and McKinley, even the most die hard loyalist to the Ancient Regime must cringe and slink off in shame. But not the Three Dyspeptic Dinosaurs.
But I digress.
It used to be that if you were on the Fullerton City Council and you were a Democrat; and if the following year happened to be an election year, your chances of being selected mayor by your colleagues were pretty damn slim. This is because the old guard country club Republicans like Dick Ackerman and Ed Royce would start pulling the strings of whichever featherheaded RINO nincompoops they had put on the council and the “rotation” that everybody talked about was out the window.
This year is a lot different. With the Recall of Jones, Bankhead, and McPension signature gathering phase coming to a successful completion, Ackerman & Co. know that this year their creaky boys cannot afford to offend anymore constituents, especially what’s left of the antique liberal cadre in Fullerton. So he must now do what for him is unthinkable, under ordinary circumstances, that goes diametrically against every fiber in his corrupt being, and that is order the Triumverate of Tone Deafness to support Sharon Quirk-Silva for mayor.
It will hurt, but it must be done. But will it help in the Recall campaign? Presumably there are some libs old, and young, who, while they won’t support the Recall publicly will certainly vote for accountability when it matters.
Politicians are forever saying asinine things and then denying they said them. Small time politicians like our own mutton head Don Bankhead have been getting away with this sort of thing for years. Televised council meetings have helped expose the intra-noggin confusion that exists in minds like Bankhead’s, but youtube has really been invaluable.
A while back we ran a post that highlighted Bruce Whitaker rightfully taking Bankhead to task for sharing his opinion that Fullerton would be ghost town without Redevelopment. No, no said Bankhead, testy-like. He really said “downtown Fullerton.” Forget that neither would be a ghost town without Redevelopment – that’s just Big Gummint Bankhead passing along all the lies he’s swallowed over the years, and of course his own campaign literature year after dreary year – taking credit for “revitalizing” DTF over and over and over and over and over again.
Here’s what Bankhead really said, verbatim, an insult to the hundreds of businesses in DTF and in the rest of the city that never took a nickel of Bankhead’s largess:
Friends, it’s that time of year when the Fullerton City Council selects one of its number to be the voice and face of Fullerton to the community, and beyond.
Some folks say the title of Mayor is really only just a name for another voting member of the council; the person who just manages (or mismanages, as the case may be) the meetings, and signs documents approved by a council majority.
Ah resemble that remark, bah golly!
But consider this: how might the world, the nation, the State and the County have perceived Fullerton, if, as the Kelly Thomas police murder saga unfolded, Fullerton’s mayor had been other than the cantankerous southern-fried buffoon who, by all appearances treated the whole event as an annoying inconvenience on his way to a ribbon-cutting.
Doomed to succeed?
Which brings us to the December 6th vote. Last year Pat McKinley weaseled out on supporting Sharon Quirk-Silva for the number two spot, as he, at the behest of the repuglican establishment, joined Bankhead and Jones in keeping the Democrat Quirk-Silva out of the rotation.
What happens when age overtakes IQ.
Well, as they say, that was then. Under normal circumstances the Ed Royce/Dick Ackerman crowd would love to cut her out again. But this year is different all right, and the Slush Fund Gang can’t afford to alienate any more voters, especially a significant liberal-leaning crowd who may very well relish yet another reason to sign a petition, and then vote to recall the Three Blind Brontosaurii.
The fact that many of these folks also qualified a referendum on the Coyote Hills development issue will cause The Three Silent Sloths’ handlers cause to pause: when the Recall signatures qualify the Fullerton lefties will have two swings to reverse the Chevron entitlements approved by Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley.
Heh heh, I'm pretty savvy. If you don't count that Ackerwoman campaign.
Ackerman isn’t stupid (although he has recently made some horrendous underestimations of the electorate). The anti-recall campaign has made a deliberate attempt to woo Fullerton’s liberal/schools/feel-good cadre by attacking a real conservative, FSD Trustee Chris Thompson. Well, okay, maybe Ackerman isn’t smart at all: Thompson out-polled every other candidate in every Fullerton ballot in 2010, so let’s see how that works out for The Dickster.
Still, wait and observe how Quirk-Silva is quietly selected as Mayor by the same bastards that refused her the Mayor Pro Tem job just a year ago.We may even hear lame explanations about last year’s vote
How would that be for cynicism of the lowest kind?
All alone.
Upon further consideration, I believe this post should address the solitary figure of Bruce Whitaker, a principled conservative who is worth ten armies of Jonses, Bankheads, and McPensions. By virtue of his intelligence, stability, and ethics, Whitaker should be the next Mayor Pro Tem, and Mayor in 2013. If that happens I’ll unscrew my right arm and throw it across the room. The Three Silent Slugs will never let that happen. And one more great reason to Recall them.
Yesterday, on another thread folks were asking about the upcoming vote for next year’s mayor. I’ll be doing a post on that, real soon. In the meantime enjoy this post by the Desert Rat that was originally published on December 13, 2010. It includes some valuable video in which you may watch the Three Deaf Dinosaurs in action.
– Joe Sipowicz
Well, that didn’t take long. Mr. Pat McPension, he of the $215,000 a year pension (yes, you read that right), exercised his second vote in office denying the Mayor Pro Tem job (if you believe in things like fair rotation) to Sharon Quirk-Silva. SQS’s problem is that she is a Democrat, and hence, in some people’s eyes, the embodiment of all evil.
Now why would Pat McPension stick it to a woman who actually endorsed him in his recent election bid? Well, if you don’t know that answer you haven’t been paying attention to Fullerton politics for the past 30 years.
Check out McPension’s opening statement for clues. Then watch the painful yank on his choke chain.
Aha! Lois Godfrey. Queen Bee of the Raymond Hills Repuglican Women, an organization dedicated to promoting RINO candidates just like Pat McPension. In fact her husband was the worst one of the bunch. These idiots actually think Doc Jones is a real conservative!
Now Lois and her electric blue-haired gaggle have been backing these zeroes since the 1980s when their patron saints were Dick Ackerman, Buck Catlin, and the hideous gargoyle, Linda LeQuire.
And of course let us not forget the role of Little Corporal, Ed Royce, for whom no candidate is too old or stupid to be foist upon Fullerton for his own purposes.
So McPension owes his dubious political accomplishment to these worthy repuglicans; and at the first opportunity they must have made it very clear to their new boy what was expected of him from those who got him elected.
Just for the Hell of it I added Sharon Quirk-Silva’s pretty dignified admonition to her colleagues after the vote. While I don’t agree with a lot of her politics, I will note for the benefit of the brain dead repuglicans whom I know read this blog:
Quirk voted against the illegal Redevelopment expansion. She voted against the worthless Richman housing project. She voted against the idiotic Transportation Center Master Boondoggle. Your repuglican heroes voted for all three!
Item #3 on yesterday’s agenda was a request by Acting Chief-Until-Mike-Sellers-Pulls-His-Head-Out-and-Comes-Back-to-Work Hamilton to buy some spiffy raincoats for his lads. 200 to be precise, at a cost of $17,000. That’s $85 bucks a pop, and presumably Hamilton got a great discount for quantity.
These uber-raincoats meet some sort of Federal guideline for work in “federal-aid” highways right-of-ways (weren’t you losing sleep worrying about that?). And naturally the current coats are old and only “water resistant.” Typical. in government resource mismanagement is always used as an excuse for big, new, outlays.
But consider this: right now Fullerton’s entire police force numbers about 140 (give or take, depending on how many are on paid or unpaid administrative leave and can’t work on any highway, federal-aid or otherwise. Then there’s the fact that not all 140 are on duty at any one time. Then there’s the fact that only a fraction of the force will actually be on patrol when it’s actually raining and might be needed to stand around after a car crash. Finally there’s the obvious fact that these people really ought to be able to share a few dozen of the same infrequently used garments.
Oh, it's raining all right.
Please note that because the money is from asset seizure and not General Fund, the requestor is unashamed to make such a profligate request.
So how did our esteemed city council vote? Apparently it passed on the Consent Calendar nod 5-0.
Watch this video clip of Fullerton City Councilman Bruce Whitaker explaining to David Nazar the lies, half-truths and distortions he’s been getting from his own employees about the Kelly Thomas murder.
Whitaker understands what we have understood all along: the Fullerton Police Department and its spokesman, union boss Andrew Goodrich, had no interest in telling anybody what really happened to the homeless victim Thomas on that hot July night in the Fullerton Transportation Center. The falsified reports, the return of the murderers to the street, and the lies peddled by Goodrich all point to one inescapable conclusion: the police department, stalled, lied, and temporized waiting for the scandal to go away.
Yes, Bruce, it must be really exasperating for an elected official to be stonewalled and sandbagged by a bunch of goons and thugs dressed up like policemen, and also by your City Manager and City Attorney who have handed over legal and managerial oversight of the police department to the cops themselves; and even more exasperating to know that the Three Dessicated Dinosaurs are committed to participate in protecting the crooked Culture of Corruption status quo.
